Kennealy-Morrison Patricia - Light our fire: my wedding to Jim Morrison: memoir

2014

I went to work at a New York City music magazine called Jazz & Pop in February 1968, a 21-year-old girl. Less than a year later, I met, in a private interview at New Yorks Plaza Hotel, a rock star whose work I deeply admired: Jim Morrison. He stood up to greet me and I almost fainted; then, when we shook hands, our touch set off a shower of blue sparks visible across the room. Jim just smiled. Portent, he said speculatively, in that impossibly deep, soft voice, looking down at me. A sign, I agreed, hardly daring to meet his eyes. We were both right.

Over the next two and a half years, we were caught up like the prince and princess of instant karma in a romance that was as astonishing and wonderful as anything I write about in my novels. He proposed to me under a flowering tree in Central Park, with a 20-carat solitaire emerald engagement ring, and we were married in a romantic Celtic ceremony called handfasting, on June 24, 1970, according to the rites of my Pagan Celtic religion (which Jim, a Scottish American, had begun to be interested in himself).

Sadly, all fairy tales dont have happy endings: on July 3, 1971, Jim died in Paris of a heroin overdose, although he was not a user and had nothing but contempt for people who did use. He had gone to Paris to finally extricate himself from a relationship he himself described as half pity, half habit, with on-again, off-again girlfriend Pamela Courson. He told me and others, including his lawyer, that he planned to end things with her gently, as she was not the most stable of individuals, to say the least, and he intended to offer her a one-time-only buyout to go away forever.

Her heroin habit and the drugs she kept around the house got to him first. Guilty and terrified of being blamed for his death, as in my opinion she deserved to be, she arranged a secret funeral in Pariss famed Pre-Lachaise cemetery and got out of Dodge as fast as she could, returning to Los Angeles the day after. She then commenced a life of heavy druggery, supporting herself as a hooker when she worked at all, and died of a heroin overdose herself in April 1974.

All this is well documented in plenty of other books besides mine. I had never planned on writing a book about Jim and me at all; it hurt far too much, and frankly, I considered it no ones business but his and mine. Ten years after Jims death, I gave in and spoke to a couple of biographers, thinking perhaps it would be good to tell my story to someone, at last; unfortunately, my breaking silence resulted in a tsunami of hostility, viciousness, and vile accusations rivaled only by those unleashed at Yoko Ono Lennon and Courtney Love Cobain. It seems that ignorant fans dont like having their tissues of lies contradicted by the truth.

In the end, it took Oliver Stones execrable movie The Doors to get me to write my own book, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison, in which I could at last tell our story with minutest reportorial detail. Critics applauded it, true enthusiasts welcomed itand fans still said I was lying. It apparently escaped them that I have proof of everything in Jims own handwriting: letters, poems, songs, even drawings.

In the end, it matters only what Jim said to me, how he felt about me, what he did for me; and I have ample proofs of all those things. So here is a small account of our wedding, from Strange Days, just to show people how he was and what he was and who he was. Not the self-indulgent, hell-raising Lizard King of popular opinion but a beautiful, intelligent, poetic, shy, vulnerable, generous, romantic soul: Jim. My Jim. Not Jim Morrison, which was only ever a mask he put on to protect himself from the grabby and insatiable demands of the fanatics. The trouble was, in the end the mask started bleeding into him, and he into it.

People who are mentioned in this excerpt, besides Jim and me and Pam: Pauline Rivellithe publisher of Jazz & Pop. Bruce Harrisin-house publicist at Elektra Records, the Doors label. Leon Barnardthe Doors personal publicist. Laura Roberts and Janice Coughlan: the rest of the staff of Jazz & Popa magazine with a readership 92 percent male, produced by four women in the heavily sexist rock n roll universe, in the dawn times of feminism. Clearly we were doing quite a lot right!

The night before Jim died, I had a vision of him: I woke up suddenly to see him standing by my bed. He was so real I could smell himhis own indefinable scent of wine and long hair and clean male body, of autumn and thunderstorms and magic. He bent to kiss me and was gone. In the morning, there was a white butterfly clinging to my window screen. Though there were rumors floating around, his death wasnt publicly announced until July 8, when Pamela Courson and Doors manager Bill Siddons, who had gone to Paris to see if the rumors were , were safely back in Los Angeles.

But I didnt need to be told.

In the days since then, I have kept the faith of our story. I consider myself still married to him, and I still wear his rings and I have our initials tattooed over my heart, and I shall go to my own grave as his wifehis lover and beloved and truest critic. And nothing anyone else, however hateful, may do or say about it is going to change that.

Patricia Kennealy Morrison, 2014